How to Stay in Front of Leads:
Why You’re Missing out on the Close

Keeping, maintaining and continually adding to your sales pipeline, is one of the most important aspects of the sales process.

Why aren’t more Sales Reps invested in prospecting? Do you have visibility into your sales activity and pipeline? What processes and KPI’s do you have in place to track performance? If your answer is, I don’t know, then you’re missing out on the close!  

 

Creating a process, developing a frequency of touches timeline, and scoring leads, will significantly increase the close rate of your overall participation and sales.

 

What does a good pipeline look like?

 

Understanding what a good pipeline should look like is half the battle. Here are three tips to look for when developing a pipeline that will generate more closed deals.

 

1.  Clean and accurate data is key. Profiling and de-duplicating your data will significantly decrease the time spent connecting with decision makers in your territory.

2.  Create a multi-touch campaign and then back into the numbers. How many touches did it take to generate an appointment? How many appointments did it take to close a deal?

3.  Create a process to ensure the appropriate follow-up that builds a relationship with prospects that do not have a current need or have already purchased from a competitor.

 

Now, understanding how to build a good pipeline doesn’t mean you’re in the clear. Most organizations live by the 70 – 30 rule (or something similar). Seventy percent of all business closed, comes from current customers and 30 percent comes from new business. Oddly enough, most companies do not account for the loss of current customers. You must implement a constant uninterrupted approach to developing a sales pipeline to account for both the sales goal and loss of clients.   

 

If you do not have an incentive plan that encourages deals from new business from new customers, then good luck! Sales Reps are motivated by what put’s commission dollars in their pocket. Separating the prospecting from the sale have been found to be the best solution to achieving optimal sales results.   

 

Here are five questions to ask yourself to ensure you have a prospecting process built for success!

 

1.  Do I have a process in place that encourages new business from new customer?

2.  Do I have visibility and analytics into all sales activity to ensure steady growth?

3.  Am I confident in my Sales Reps ability to prospect for new business?

4.  Can my Sales Rep effectively present to new customers?

5.  Does my Sales Rep have efficient enough time to prospect to establish a constant working pipeline?

 

Sales is the heart beat of every origination’s lifeline. Prospecting is to sales, as eating healthy and exercising is to a human body, yet it is often the most ignored in the sales cycle.

 

Understanding the importance and being proactive on developing a prospecting pipeline is the single most important change you can implement in your current sales process. Goals without action and execution is simply a vision; however, a steady pipeline of core fit customers and sales ready opportunities is your vehicle to achievement!

 

Scoring Leads

Logical Sales Solution provides a seamless integration into your sales goals and initiatives. We provide a steady stream of sales ready opportunities and a consistent pipeline of potential customers that is developed by dedicated activity and complete visibility that you can count on.